Chapter LXVI: Conclusion: From the general survey which we have taken of Africa, and (4)

It is singular, considering the extent of area, and the diversity of positions in the world over which silicified trees are found exposed above ground, that so little has been written on the subject. In Trinidad, in the West Indies, they are abundant; and they prevail over a vast expanse of surface on the seaboard of New Holland. They abound on the Coromandel coast near Madras; and in Scinde are found from Sukkur to Kurrachee, on salt desert sand, resting on nummulite limestone, exactly as in Egypt.

CAIRO TO SUEZ. It has been already stated that our party arrived at Cairo on the morning of the 23d of December. Only a few hours is allowed, and every one should make his arrangements without unnecessary delay. Having arranged at the Transit Office to get all luggage, a small bag excepted, sent forward, and secured his place, the traveler may be considered ready to start. The conveyance to Suez is by vans, which start in detachments at specified hours. In hot weather, it is preferable to start from Cairo in the afternoon, so as to travel all night. By this plan he arrives at the centre sleeping-station in the morning, and after a few hours’ repose, he can again proceed, so as to reach Suez early in the following morning. Some go on direct; others stop.

The distance from Cairo to Suez is eighty-five or eighty-six miles; and as the line of route is without any towns or villages, station-houses have been erected for the accommodation of travelers, and for changing of horses. There are altogether seven station-houses, of which No. 4 from Cairo is the most commodious. Refreshments are furnished at three of the stations, and they are usually of the most sumptuous kind. The vans are of different sizes. For the greater part they are strong clumsy machines, open all around, tolerably stuffed, but without springs――merely suspended on leathern straps. They have two wheels about five feet in diameter; that is, one-third larger than those of a common carriage. They are drawn by four horses, two being in shafts, and two before them in traces. They are, in general, not over-well trained, tempered, or conditioned; but really, on the whole, get on wonderfully well. The plan of the drivers generally is to urge them a good gallop for a mile or so, and then allow them a few minutes to rest. Including twelve hours’ repose by the way, the journey from Cairo to Suez is performed in thirty-two to thirty-six hours.

There is but little of the Suez desert covered with drift sand; it consists mainly of hard gravel, with a vast abundance of loose stones in all directions. The vans seldom adhere very regularly to any particular track, and the jolting is occasionally dreadful. In the direction of Suez, as indeed in most other directions, unless when approaching the Nile, you enter on the Desert at once. The burying-ground around the city is all in sand; and the first step beyond this, the ground is as completely barren and desolate as it can be in the heart of the Great Sahara itself. The route through might be almost traced by the skeletons and bones of camels to be seen all a long; thousands and thousands lie bleaching by the wayside. The surface of the ground is salt, and covered with rounded pebbles, chiefly the Egyptian agate, and sea-shells. Pieces of petrified wood, often of considerable magnitude, lie strewed around: and when the limestone rock shows itself above the sand and gravel, it is generally perforated by the _pholas_, or some other variety of marine borer. The rocks, like those near Cairo, abound in petrifactions――beautiful specimens of crabs and stars-fishes being amongst the most abundant. Little nimble fairy-looking lizards, in color very like the surface of the ground around them, are occasionally to be seen in the Desert; also a curious variety of serpent, with two horn-like processes protruding from the forehead. There are numberless vultures and carrion crows, which feed on the dead carcases of the animals who so frequently perish on the way across. Besides these, scarcely a living thing is to be seen. Here and there are considerable quantities of the poisonous henbane, and half-way betwixt Suez and Cairo numerous bushes of the prickly acacia or camelthorn. Just beyond the centre station is what is called ‘the tree of the Desert;’ solitary acacia, about one and a half feet in diameter, and ten feet length of stem, with a large thick bushy round top. This is seen at a vast distance from each side: to the weary wayworn traveler it seems almost impossible to approach it, he riding for hours after first catching sight of it without apparently coming nearer it.

The beautiful phenomenon known to sailors as ‘looming,’ to naturalists as _mirage_, equally visible in extremely cold as in warm countries, is often seen in great perfection betwixt Cairo and Suez. It is occasioned by the unequal temperature and refractive powers of different strata of the atmosphere――objects being invariably elongated or depressed, or a succession of images of them exhibited one over another. Scoresby gives drawings of images of ships and icebergs being seen by him in the arctic regions――direct or reversed, or the one and the other alternately――high up in the air. Pools, and lakes of water, are occasionally seen to fill up the hollows or valleys; and this is the shape the illusion most frequently assumes. Three of us together once saw so perfect a picture of a pool surrounded by lofty rocks and hills, by which there were two tall men in black fishing, that, but for the fact that we had traversed the ground before, and knew that there was no such thing in existence, no reasoning short of that which induced us to refuse the testimony of ourselves could have persuaded us that it was all deception. The fishers turned out to be a couple of crows, the rocks and trees a few stones and shrubs――not half so many inches in reality as they seemed feet in altitude. On another occasion, the low hillocks to the south of the centre station rose into stupendous cliffs――a noble river cleft its way through a chasm by which they were disrupted, and was received in a finely-wooded lake at their base. It seemed some three or four miles off――the whole was occasioned by the distortion of objects not two hundred yards away. So constantly had we witnessed these exhibitions in April 1840, that the Red Sea was visible for nearly an hour before we believed it to be other than an illusion: the sight of ships and steamers was the first thing that convinced us of the reality.

The portion of the road nearest to Suez is extremely rough, and the path is covered on every side with large rounded stones; the whole forming one of the most unsightly portions of the Desert. Barren and arid as it is, it is curious to find fresh plants of the water-melon species growing here and there on the most unfruitful-looking spots. The leaves are about the tint, form, and size of those of the sweet-scented geranium. The stems trail along the ground, attaining a length of two or three feet. The fruit is about the size of a smallish apple, bright-green, and very pretty. In many places here, the sand of the Desert is in process of solidification into rock. The muriates and sulphates of the sea-salt, with which the soil is charged, seem to act on the calcareous material abounding everywhere; and the result is a carbonate of soda and sulphate of lime. The last constitutes the cementing material: it is bright and shining, in small plates or crystals, and yields readily to the finger-nail. A specimen of the rock which is the result of this, would most grievously perplex a geologist not familiar with the process by which it is formed. It consists of the sand and the sea-shells of the Desert――the last of these, when near Suez, being all apparently perfectly recent and identical with those now in the Red Sea; of the Egyptian jaspers, which here mainly constitute the gravel of the Desert, and are themselves the remnants of an abraded conglomerate of one of the rock formations at hand, and of the oyster, nummulite, and other shells of the different varieties of tertiary limestone, everywhere presenting itself above the surrounding drift and alluvium. With these heterogeneous materials, the bones of birds and animals now existing in the country, or portions of the works of man, may occasionally mingle, and present a conglomerate made up of as many different kinds of material as can be collected together. This, it must be recollected, is a process not confined to a few limited spots: it is apparently in progress over vast expanses of surface in all parts of the Desert towards the shore of the Red Sea. Though there is no continuous rain, heavy showers occasionally fall near Suez; and in the pools formed by them, fishes, some inches long, have been found four or five miles from the sea.

When within four miles of Suez, you reach the edge of a perfectly level plain, diversified here and there by slight ridges and hillocks of sand and gravel, but the whole wearing the appearance of one of the most recent upheavals――the Red Sea, at a geological period comparatively recent, having obviously covered a large surface now dry land. It was noon before we reached Suez, and we were to leave at three; but as I had been before disappointed in my attempts to examine the country around, I was resolved to make the most of the two hours at my disposal. I accordingly, hammer in hand, and knapsack on back, proceeded to make a geological ramble; and I need only say, was amply repaid for my trouble, as well as for the annoyance from a scorching sun. Close to Suez is the track where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea in flying into the wilderness from Egyptian bondage. Wilkinson assumes the place to have been a little above the harbor, at the camel ford, where the water then must have been much deeper than now, and where the effects of ‘a strong east wind,’ as described in Exodus, are now similar to what they seem to have been from the account given of them in Holy Writ. The extremity of the Red Sea is a few miles above the town, and thither travelers sometimes proceed to have the pleasure of placing one foot on African, the other on Arabian ground.

The entire journey through Egypt from Alexandria to Suez is usually performed in seventy-two hours; and to afford time for travelers getting forward, the steamers for India do not start for several hours later.

SUEZ TO INDIA. Suez is a poor, walled town, situated at the head of the Red Sea, and sustains its existence principally by the trade of the great caravans of pilgrims from Egypt in their journey to Mecca. Latterly, it has come a little into note by being made the point of embarkation for India. The pasha built a very large and handsome hotel at Suez, the only decent-looking building in the place. The water here is all highly saline: it contains a considerable quantity of pure alkali, and is well adapted for washing――that used by Europeans for drinking is brought from the Nile. Coal is also transported across the Desert from Cairo on camels, and here costs £6 a ton.

Quitting Suez, a long pull of nearly two miles through shallows and intricate channels brings you to the roadstead, where the steamer waits your reception――the smoking funnel and roaring steam giving note of a preparation for a start. The Gulf of Suez, which comes to a point a little way above the town, is about three miles across at the place from which the steamer starts. The distance from Suez to Aden is sixteen hundred miles due south-east; that from Aden to Bombay is nineteen hundred and sixty miles east and by north. Passengers to Calcutta are accommodated in the magnificent steamers of the Oriental Steam Navigation Company, each from twelve hundred to fifteen hundred tons burden, and four hundred to five hundred horse-power. These vessels proceed straight to Aden, this part of the route being common to both; then stretch away south-east for Ceylon, nearly at right angles to the path pursued by the Bombay vessels. The Bombay passengers are conveyed by the packets or war-steamers of the Indian navy: a portion of these are from seven hundred to seven hundred and fifty tons burden, and from two hundred and twenty to two hundred and fifty horse-power. Two very superior vessels, each of twelve hundred tons and four hundred horse-power, have lately been put on the line, and two others of still larger dimensions are now in process of construction. It was on board the _Acbar_, a first-rate ship, commanded by one of the most popular officers of the Indian navy, that we found ourselves on Christmas eve 1845. The traveler towards the East, who has been dragging by each remove a lengthening chain――who has found semi-tropical Europe at Gibraltar and Malta, and fairly tasted of the Orient in Egypt――at length finds a floating fragment of India before him at Suez. The talk becomes exclusively of Bombay: inquiries are made after old places and friends, and England is spoken of as now a distant country, not soon to be seen again. The regulations as to dress, discipline, etc., are the same in the Indian as in the royal navy; and the packets are in all respects regarded as ships of war. To the old Indian, everything looks familiar; to the visitor for the first time to the East, all seems a fragment and foretaste of what is to come. Seldom, indeed, do you find so large a variety of races assembled in so narrow a compass. The officers, engineers, and regular seamen of the ship are Englishmen, all rigged out man-of-war fashion. The pilots are Arabs, from Aden or Mocha. Their costumes are beautifully picturesque and they are for the most part highly intelligent-looking men. Then you have the sepoys of the Bombay Marine Battalion, smart, dark-olive complexioned men, in the common uniform of the English soldier. The servants of the ship are mostly Portuguese, natives of the East, dressed in jackets and trousers of white cotton, such as Europeans not in uniform usually wear in India. The butler and head-servants are generally Parsees or Mussulmen: the Hindoo is forbidden by his creed from serving where his hands might be defiled by the flesh of the sacred cow. The firemen are mostly Mohammedans, or low-caste Hindoos――strong active fellows, who perform all the drudgery about the engine-room.

Fairly afloat on the Red Sea, there is little to attract the eye, the shores being rocky, sandy, and lifeless. If the weather be clear, we see in the distance north from Suez the towering summit of Sinai. As the traveler proceeds southwards, he begins to be interested in the changes presented by the firmament. At night the Southern Cross becomes prominent amongst the constellations, and the beautiful clouds of Magellan give nubulæ of an aspect altogether different from any he has seen before. The Great Bear is no longer seen to sweep around the Pole; the tail becomes at times altogether invisible, the four stars which constitute the quadrangle only keeping in view, and the great land-mark, so to speak, by which the tyro astronomer guides his way amongst the constellations, is for a period lost sight of. The moon and planets again shine out with unusual splendor; and the phenomena, new to the European, are presented by a night sky intensely bright without the sensation of cold being occasioned by it.

The middle channel alone is navigable for vessels of any considerable burden. Vast margins on either shore are filled up with coral to near the surface of the water. The scenes these present are often beyond description beautiful. When we went up in June 1845, the wind blew a strong breeze against us. Captain Barker, who was engaged in the survey, knew every channel and island so well, that he often took the most narrow and intricate, to enable him to keep the lee of some rocky island, and so shelter his ship from the adverse wind. From the mast-head, the track through which we navigated was of so deep and intense a blue, it was hard to believe that the waters were not colored by some dyeing substance. They looked like the liquid seen streaming from the dyer’s pot. A few ships’ length on either side, they suddenly became slightly tinted with green; a little beyond, the greenish blue became turned into a bluish green; a band of the most intense emerald green succeeded, and then swept towards the shore; the last hue the sea assumed, before breakers appeared, was a whitish green, when the coral was but a few feet beneath the surface. These colors appeared in well-defined bands――they were not shaded, nor run into each other, as if produced by the gradual shoaling of the reef, but seemed the effect of a set of shelves, with precipices of no great elevation between. The effect of the whole was heightened by the brown and burnt hue of the rocks and islands which were constantly appearing, rising suddenly from the surface to an altitude of some scores or hundreds of feet.

Keeping straight on our course down the middle of the Red Sea, we do not approach the land till the Straits of Babel-Mandeb make their appearance. Here the sea is greatly narrowed, not only by the projections of land, but by the island of Perim. The Straits are closed in on both sides by rugged, barren, burnt-looking rocks――the distance across being about three miles. Pushing her way through one of the channels, the steamer turned towards the left in a south-easterly direction, being now in what is called the Sea of Babel-Mandeb, which is a portion of the Indian Ocean. A series of picturesque and precipitous capes and headlands, along the coast of Arabia-Felix, on our left, came in view, and stretched away to the most prominent of them, for which we were steering――Cape Aden.

It was near midnight when we reached Aden, and a portion only of the passengers landed. The only object of the stoppage is to take in coal. Aden is situated in latitude 12 degrees 47 minutes north: longitude 45 degrees 9 minutes east. It is a wild, barren peninsula, composed of volcanic rocks, and of no use except as a half-way house to India _via_ the Red Sea. Within two hundred yards of the landing-place there is a hotel, kept by a Parsee. It contains a large roomy hall, in which smoking is specially forbidden, but always indulged in, with a very good verandah all round, and good bedrooms, and baths. There is a store for general merchandise behind, and a billiard-room, likely to become a common nuisance, close by. I was one of the party who went ashore to the hotel; but all attempts to sleep were vain, in consequence of the noise made by members of the party, who chose to sit up drinking and smoking! As early as three o’clock I arose, and made a most interesting little excursion to the extinct volcanoes in the neighborhood, where the garrison is situated. This leads me to speak of the manner in which the place has become a British settlement.

Aden fell into our possession in 1839. It previously belonged to the sultan of Lahege, who was little better than a common marauder, and in 1837 plundered a Madras vessel sailing under British colors, which had the misfortune to go ashore. A collision with Britain followed; and finally, after some fighting, and a stipulation by treaty to pay the sultan a few thousand dollars annually, the place was taken possession of. The population has since risen from six hundred to above ten thousand, besides the troops and their followers from India: of these there are generally three thousand in garrison. A traffic is kept up with the interior of Arabia by means of camels and asses. There is good fresh water in wells in the cantonments, but nowhere besides, which is a sore drawback in the place.

We quitted Aden about three in the afternoon, and after losing sight of land, saw nothing but the broad ocean, till the high lands on the south of Bombay made their appearance. In a few hours the vessel arrived at its destination, and I stood once more on Indian ground, with well-known faces around me. The journey altogether from Southampton had occupied from thirty-nine to forty days, which is about the average allowance of time. My expenses may be set down at £120. Fortunately, no accident had occurred on the journey; neither, as is usually the case, was there any interruption in the arrangements established for the benefit of travelers. All went on smoothly and agreeably; and every year promises to add new accommodations and new pleasures to the excursion. Such is the story of what is now a very unromantic affair――AN OVERLAND JOURNEY TO INDIA.

[1] Some years ago, a traveler, Mr. G. A. Hoskins, visited
the site of this capital state of ancient Ethiopia, an
island, if it may be so called, about 300 miles long,
enclosed within two forking branches of the Nile. He found
in it several distinct groups of magnificent pyramidal
structures. Of one ruin he says――‘Never were my feelings
more ardently excited than in approaching, after so tedious
a journey, to this magnificent necropolis. The appearance of
the pyramids in the distance announced their importance; but
I was gratified beyond my most sanguine expectations when I
found myself in the midst of them. The pyramids of Gizeh are
magnificent, wonderful from their stupendous magnitude; but
for picturesque effect and elegance of architectural design,
I infinitely prefer those of Meroe. I expected to find few
such remains here, and certainly nothing so imposing, so
interesting, as these sepulchres, doubtless of the kings and
queens of Ethiopia. I stood for some time lost in
admiration. This, then, was the necropolis, or city of the
dead! But where was the city itself, Meroe, its temples and
palaces? A large space, about 2000 feet in length, and the
same distance from the river, strewed with burnt brick and
with some fragments of walls, and stones, similar to those
used in the erection of the pyramids, formed, doubtless,
part of that celebrated site. The idea that this is the
exact situation of the city is strengthened by the remark of
Strabo, that the walls of the habitations were built of
bricks. These indicate, without doubt, the site of that
cradle of the arts which distinguish a civilized from a
barbarous society. Of the birthplace of the arts and
sciences, the wild natives of the adjacent villages have
made a miserable burying-place; of the city of the
learned――“its cloud-capt towers,” its “gorgeous palaces,”
its “solemn temples”――there is “left not a rack behind.” The
sepulchres alone of her departed kings have fulfilled their
destination of surviving the habitations which their
philosophy taught them to consider but as inns, and are now
fast mouldering into dust. Scarcely a trace of a palace or a
temple is to be seen.’

[2] When Alexander the Great was in Babylon, the Chaldæans
told him their order had begun their astronomical
observations 400,000 years before he was born.

[3] It may be necessary to remind our readers here that the
annual number of public executions in Howard’s time was
fearfully large.

[4] Of the famous ‘Black Assize’ at Oxford, mentioned in the
text as an instance of the malignity of the jail fever, the
following is the account given by the chronicler
Stowe:――‘The 4th, 5th, and 6th days of July, 1577, were
holden the assizes at Oxford, where was arraigned and
condemned one Rowland Jenkes for his seditious tongue; at
which time there arose such a damp, that almost all were
smothered. Very few escaped that were not taken at that
instant. The jurors died presently. Shortly after died Sir
Robert Bell, lord chief baron; Sir Robert D’Olie, Sir
William Babington, Mr. Weneman, Mr. D’Olie, high sheriff;
Mr. Davers, Mr. Harcourt, Mr. Kirle, Mr. Phetplace, etc.
There died in Oxford three hundred persons; and sickened
there, but died in other places, two hundred and odd, from
the 6th of July to the 12th of August, after which day died
not one of that sickness, for one of them infected not
another, nor any woman or child died thereof.’ An occurrence
so horrible gave rise of course to much speculation at the
time, and various strange explanations were had recourse to,
of which the following will serve as a specimen:――‘Rowland
Jenkes,’ says one anonymous writer, ‘being imprisoned for
treasonable words spoken against the queen, and being a
popish recusant, had notwithstanding, during the time of his
restraint, liberty sometimes to walk abroad with a keeper;
and one day he came to an apothecary and showed him a recipe
which he desired him to make up; but the apothecary, upon
the view of it, told him that it was a strong and dangerous
recipe, and required some time to prepare it, but also asked
him to what use he would apply it. He answered, to kill the
rats that, since his imprisonment, spoiled his books; so,
being satisfied, he promised to make it ready; after a time
he cometh to know if it was ready; but the apothecary said
the ingredients were so hard to procure, that he had not
done it, and so gave him the recipe again, of which he had
taken a copy, which mine author had there precisely written
down, but did seem so horribly, poisonous, that I cut it
forth, lest it might fall into the hands of wicked persons.
But after, it seems, he had got it prepared, and against the
day of his trial had made a week or wick of it [for so is
the word――that is, so fitted, that, like a candle, it might
be fired], which, as soon as ever he was condemned, he
lighted, having provided himself with a tinder-box and steel
to strike fire. And whosoever should know the ingredients of
that wick or candle, and the manner of the composition, will
easily be persuaded of the virulency and venomous effects of
it.’ This explanation seems to have been adapted to the
public appetite for the wonderful; at all events, being
anonymous, it is to be regarded as nothing more than a
curiosity. The generally received explanation was, that the
disease arose from infection brought into court by the
prisoners; and the opinion, sanctioned by lord Bacon, that
this infection was a fever bred by the filth of the jail,
was but too surely confirmed by subsequent instances of a
precisely similar nature.

Transcriber’s Note:

This book was written in a period when many words had not become standardized in their spelling. Titles of individuals were not always spelled with a capital letter. Proper nouns may have multiple spelling variations; inconsistent use of hyphens and diacriticals were not changed. Dialect, obsolete words, spelling errors and incorrect dates were not changed. Words missing from the text were not added.

Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the end of the book. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down, and partially printed letters, were corrected. Letters in reverse order were corrected. Capital letters were added where missing at the beginning of sentences. Final stops missing at the end of abbreviations and sentences were added. Duplicate letters and words at line endings or page breaks were removed.

Unprinted dashes were added between entries within the Table of Contents. For consistency, space was added between letters B. C. Unprinted quotation marks were added and mis-matched quotation marks were adjusted to standard usage.